An Online Game a Day, Keeps the Family Lonely & Sedentary Time Away
A recently published study has found that the family who plays an online game a day together, is more likely to exercise and spend more time together.
A recently published study has found that the family who plays an online game a day together, is more likely to exercise and spend more time together.
More than half of American adults currently do not report meeting the recommended amount of exercise, which is troubling in a nation where heart disease as a leading cause of death has started to rise again for the first time in a few decades. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have taken note of this trend, and sought to come up with an experiment that would get the family, and not just the adults involved in exercise. The researchers developed a game style app with the reward being a coffee cup, to try and get adults and their families outside and exercising together. The app, together with a fit-bit device, randomly tracked one family member a day (without the family's knowledge of who was being tracked) with the whole family gaining points if that person met their daily goal. This tactic of not letting the whole family know who was being tracked, forced the families to exercise as a whole and together to ensure that everyone met their goal.
In all, 200 people from 94 families took part in the study with 56% being female and 54% male. The group was relatively active with the average steps being taken numbering around 7,500 whereas the average for an American is ~5,000 steps. All participants were white and had a median household income of $100,000, making the devices and apps used in the survey very attainable and within their disposable income. The results showed that the incentive of a prize, even if it was only a mug, boosted each families' step count by 1,661 compared to the control groups steps of 636 within the first 12 weeks of the experiment. There is more research warranted in regards to how much the program cost, and if it is a viable option for all families, but the research is promising due to the fact that it was able to get all family members exercising together!
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